Monday, February 29, 2016

I am a Super Villain . . . and I Have a Book!

Greetings, WYMOP readers!

I write.

I write quite a bit, actually. Monthly movie reviews, blog posts in various places (this one, for example!), and fiction. Stories. I like writing stories the best, and sometimes people even pay me for them; they put them in books, magazines, stuff like that. I’ve been harping all month long about a book I put together with Books & Boos Press, out of Hartford Connecticut. Maybe you’ve heard of it: Echoes of Darkness?

Well, this post isn’t about the book. You’re sick of hearing about the book. Don’t deny it, I can tell. It’s the way you avoid eye contact with me whenever I talk about it now; it’s a dead give away. No, this week I’m going to talk about something else you may have seen me write about: my hate-hate relationship with technology.

See, my publisher thought I was kidding when I spoke of it. Thought it was just hyperbole for comedic effect. Thought I was pulling her leg. That I was chock-full of bull byproduct.

She thought I was exaggerating.

Oh, there were the usual little glitches one finds in this business. Stuff no one really pays attention to: emails delayed in transit, text services failing for no discernable reason, small files going walkabout and having to be recreated on the spot. Kid’s stuff. No worries. Or so we thought.

My evil curse was simply saving itself, and gathering its strength.

Echoes of Darkness released yesterday, and became available on Amazon. My publisher stayed up until midnight Saturday to push the publish button, so as to have the book come out on the day promised, as well as order my print copies for me right there in the middle of the night so they’d be the first thing on Amazon’s To-do list in the morning. She hit the button and had to wait for the book to show up as live in the Kindle store before she could place her order—usually a matter of 15-20 minutes, max.

Thirty-five minutes later, after much head-scratching and where-is-it-ing, Echoes of Darkness was available from Kindle. “I’m heading to bed,” texted my publisher. “The print copy usually comes on a delay—it should be up in three or four hours. Ten or twelve, max.”

I got up four hours later, rushed to the computer, and found . . . no print copy available on Amazon. No worries, I thought. She said twelve hours, max. I can wait. While I was waiting I turned to an interview my publisher and I recorded, loading it onto The Storyside website to release as a podcast. Now it’s a WordPress site, and I was using a podcasting plugin recommended for use by WordPress, called—you’ll love this—Seriously Simple Podcasting. That’s perfect for me, I thought. It says Seriously Simple right there in the title . . .

Five hours later, after some Seriously Stressed out texting with the publisher—who knew no more about the system than I did—I threw up my hands and counted it a bad business. There was a glitch in the system that I just couldn’t figure out, despite multiple help sites, all of them carrying that mocking Seriously Simple in the masthead. I cursed the lying Seriously Simple name. I cursed the lying Seriously Simple creators. I cursed their lying Seriously Simple mothers—and then calmed down, because cursing other people’s mothers is just bad karma, and I had enough going wrong.

I checked Amazon. Closing on eleven hours and still no print copy. I texted my publisher, who said “This is just incredible—I’ve never seen it take this long!”

I sighed. It was a sad little defeated sound. Seriously Simple had beat me senseless without breaking a sweat, and the Amazon machine was going to simply ignore me until I didn’t exist any more. Though my publisher had been the one to actually push the button, my techno-jinx had reached out across state lines, all the way from Boston to Hartford, to put the whammy on her ass too.

Handsome had come to visit that weekend, so I took advantage in this little break in my breakdown to take him home. I checked when we got there, and nope: still no print copy, though twelve hours had come and gone.

I sighed.

Then I saw an email that had rolled in while I was driving. There is a rather large small press out there that runs a pretty big blog. They allow smaller authors (like yours truly) to run guest posts when they have new books coming out, and I had sent one in. It was due to come out the same day as my book, but I’d forgotten all about it between my struggles with Seriously Simple and clicking into Amazon every five minutes to keep my disappointment level up. Maybe this would be the high point in my day!

Rob, my computer crashed this morning. If I can get it fixed tomorrow I'll upload your post immediately.

Working on a very slow laptop at the moment. Horrible!

Send me the links if the book's live.

I sighed, and sent a quick email to my publisher:

See? It’s not just you. That computer is in his home office in South Africa. My jinx just reached halfway around the world.

I am officially a super villain.

~ ~ * * ~ ~

I am, however, a super villain who writes. And I have a book out. It just came out yesterday, and I would be remiss not to suggest somebody out there go buy it.

Thirteen tales of darkness. All for you. For just $3.99 on Kindle. Because even as I write this, more than forty-one hours after pushing the button, there is no print version available. Because I am The Jinxter. Feel my power . . .

Talk to you later!

P.S. - The podcast interview I mentioned actually is up and running at the moment, and is available HERE. It’s pretty short.**UPDATE!**—It's 6:15 the following morning, and sometime in the night the paperback popped up on Amazon.